Written by: Beastwithin < Caution > | Vashj | Original thread

This is an sum up i’ ve made not only of shaman nerfs, but also our complications we have had with some of our Cm’s and further. Hopefully this will make some ppl understand why we are so angry with our situation. Ive probably missed alot, but you get the picture. (Some of this content and information has been taken from other posts.)

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.2.0 (2004-12-21)
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Shaman
- Earthbind Totem: Added a 15-second cooldown.

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.4.0 (2005-04-19)
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- Windfury – Fixed a bug that caused an additional attack beyond what
was intended. In addition, fixed a bug that caused the next normal
melee attack to happen sooner than intended.

- Frost Shock – Now subject to diminishing returns in PvP. This is
considered a slowing effect.

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.10.0 (2006-03-28)
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- Shaman will no longer stop falling when they use a Sentry Totem.

(lol)

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.0.1 (2006-12-05)
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- Rockbiter’s weapon functionality has been changed. It is now a damage proc
instead of a flat attack power bonus.

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.0 (2007-05-22)
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- Elemental Focus: This talent now reduces the cost of the next
damage spell by 60%

- Windfury Weapon: Mixing two different ranks of Windfury Weapon
while dual-wielding will no longer increase the number of Windfury
Weapon procs.

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.2 (2007-06-19)
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- Focused Mind: This ability has been changed to reduce the duration of
silence and interrupt effects, rather than increase resistance to
them.

- Earthbind Totem: This totem will no longer break Rogue stealth.

Chapter 2.

Phase 1 -

Shaman review was supposed to be in patch 1.9 – however the completely gimp state of paladins got through to the devs and they got their patch in that cycle instead. Since paladins at that point in the game had been nerfed into 3rd rate tanks, lowest dps in the game and crappy healers all anyone wanted them for was blessings and cleanse. So this was reasonable. Shamans were told – wait for 1.10

1.10 patch cycle – Paladin buffs make priests cry – Priests get reviewed instead of Shaman. Shaman told to wait for 1.11, mages told they will be in 1.12

1.11 – Mages throw a conniption about the delay – Mage and shaman reviews are combined into the same review cycle. Eyonix is sent to the Shaman forum to start a suggestions and feedback thread and one of the other Devs does the same for Mages.

Phase 2 -

Eyonix goes to E3 – misses about 5 days of work, then at the end of e3 has a gout? flareup and is out sick for several weeks.

Tseric and Caydiem come into the Shaman forums and say they will be gathering feedback in Eyo’s place. “search for ‘bite sized’ to see some of the threads spawned by these posts”

Review period comes to a close – 1.11 patch hits PTR – it contains Mage buffs, Druid buffs and a wide variety of shaman nerfs. There is exactly 1 non resto shaman buff – the craptastic t6 enhance talent is taken out and replaced with +10% melee damage.
Druids get innervate for free ( Edit : that was their last , top tier talent in the resto tree , ie 30 talent points required to get to it !) . Mages get Evocation for free ( Edit : that used to be tier 5 talent powerhouse in arcane treee, ie 21st talent point ! ). Shaman still have to spec 31 resto for mana-tide (despite Mana tide being trainable, bloodlust and hex being the three most common requests during the review period)

Euro forums have a mild eruption – Euro CM looks into the problem and posts there that the Shaman feedback was apparently never submitted to the developers, and it is too late to do so – the patch is going live as is, and shaman have had thier review.

Cross posted to the US shaman forums – general disbelief and outrage occurs.

Phase 3 -

Eyonix gets back from sick leave and pops into the Shaman forum long enough to say “How do you like your review?”

Pure Hatred explodes (including death threats and the “get hit by a bus” statement.

Forum mods spend the next 48hours deleting threads and banning people. Eyonix posts that he will not do anything to help the players because they are not treating him with respect (this seriously happened, search for the blue post archives).

Quote by Vili on the shaman forums:

The problem was, and remains, that we have had “0″ feedback/interaction. None. Zip. Nada. Nein. Long before the 0.5 shaman patch came along, shaman were the epitome of professionalism and restraint. We didn’t complain because other classes had it worse. Still, we offered suggestions, ways to improve things. We did calculations, gave rational arguments, and were the most mature of any forum.

After many times of having shaman pushed back to a later patch, we finally had our patch coming. We eagerly provided many good arguments on the problems inherent in the shaman class, how they could be reasonably fixed, new suggestions, etc.

We heard nothing.

Some people started getting concerned. Shaman still acted maturely and continued with their suggestions.

We heard nothing.

Suddenly shaman got a post sayin “Here’s what your talent review is going to consist of” (sorry about the preposition).

That was it. No “we’ll consider your recommendations’, or ‘what are your suggestions’, or ‘what input do you have’.

We got told what we were getting. And it addressed NOTHING of any substance. The lack of ANY interaction by a CM or ANY blue at ANY time before, during, or AFTER the talent review, combined with the blindside of a talent ‘fix’ which IGNORED the problems in the shaman class, made the shaman community very hostile.

So someone makes a juvenile ‘bus shock’ comment about Eyonix, and THEN he responds. The FIRST and ONLY response by him. To a stupid post. Meanwhile he’s not doing his job and completely ignores the VAST majority of substantial shaman suggestions.

So what do shaman want? They want a mature CM who actually interacts with the community. Through that interaction, we would be assured that, yes, they actually do read forum posts. Instead, we get complete and total silence. Maybe once in a while some other CM will pop in and ask for comments and never be heard from again (note: Tseric).

But we have no CM. Haven’t for a long number of months now. Long before this stupid ‘bus shock’ incident. Eyonix is like the guy you hire to do work, and he tells you he’s doing work, but you never actually see examples of his work, or proof that he’s actually doing work and not sleeping in the back room.

Shaman want interaction. That’s it. It could be the worst news in the world, but if a CM explained it, worked with the community, shaman would most likely accept it.

I mean, their frickin’ job is to read internet messages and play a frickin’ video game! How hard can it be? I don’t see them out there delineating wetlands, conducting listed species surveys, or writing environmental impact studies. I don’t see any real work being done. Their job is to manage frickin’ video game message boards.

And we don’t even get that.

That is why we are so very often angry. And justifiably so.

Chapter 3

Eyonix:
Right now the class team is heavily focused on the expansion. We will be announcing details of what’s in store for each class in the weeks to come. There are a number of improvements we’re considering for Shamans in expansion, such as improved totem UI and functionality. I’ve also been studying the development of new talents and abilities for each class, and so far I’m fairly excited at what I’ve seen for the Shaman. [Despite the belief that no one reads the Shaman boards (ironically, our loudest forum), we're fully aware of the feedback that's been expressed here, and will do what we can to address it.] Much of the improvement players are demanding will have to wait until the Burning Crusade launches, which isn’t too far off.

Chapter 4 – Expantion

2.2 No balance changes

General: Hi, we have no CC and it stops us from getting instance groups and being competitive in pvp. We only have one spell school so we can’t do anything while locked out of it. Also our entire class mechanic has 5hp and is destroyed easily with a spammable pet macro.

Resto PvE: Chain heal is great, we have mana problems but we deal with shadow priests and high mp5 so it’s not a real issue

Resto PvP: Earth shield is our only defense and is dispelled easily because we can’t hide it and it has no spell resistances. We’re not like other healers who can CC or bubble if a warrior gets on us and have to rely on it. Our only really useful 2v2 comp was nerfed in the WF hotfix to boot.

Enhancement PvE: You nerfed WF totem in a hotfix! If the rogue was doing too much damage why did you have to nerf MY raid viability. Oh well, I still get a spot because heroism and WF still rock. BTW, why is there mp5 and int on my gear? I don’t need mana because shamanistic rage generates it faster than I spend it.

Enhancement PvP: I can’t get close to anything, they just kite me for ages because I can’t break snares. I’m also destroyed if anyone targets me because I have no escape abilities or CC

Ele Pve: We do massive threat and take a lot of mana. It takes salvation and a shadow priest to fuel us but we do enough damage to get raid spots at least.

Ele pvp: We’re in pretty much every 5v5 group because heroism rocks and we can burst on demand. We can’t really do much in smaller brackets though because of pushback.

2.3 General:

Blizz: I have some good news! We’re taking frost shock off of DR! Also, we’re going to improve grounding totem by making it only absorb one spell and we’re going to put a DR on interrupts to help prevent you from being locked down so easily. It should be noted that you are the only class that is capable of triggering this DR on your own.

Shamans: Flood the forums with “.” posts, (dot shock). And made several hundereds of level 1 character on one server with the goal to make a death trail from the orc starting grounds to ogrimmar. (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/223/508053407_3d463a1a17_b.jpg).

Blizz: Ok ok, we’ll take earth shock off of DR
(I am well aware dot shock was because of censorship, not the DR. However, they occurred at the same time and that is the general conception sadly)

Shamans: What about the grounding totem nerf? Why was it done?

Blizzard: (silence)

Resto:

Blizz: I hear you about that mana problem, here take more mana from your mana spring and water shield. We’re also turning some + healing into spell damage.

Shammans: That’s great, what about our pvp problems? These don’t really affect us in pvp. Even the spell damage doesn’t help much because the shaman class is designed so that you have to spec heavily into a tree to get any use out of it.

Blizz: That’s right! Pvp changes! We hear you about dispelling issues so we are giving hunters dispel on arcane shot and might put a 30 second cooldown on earth shield so that you don’t have to recast it as much

Shammans: What? A 30 second cooldown is a huge nerf !

Blizz: Ok we’ll put off earth shield changes a little longer

Enhance:

Blizz: You should be happy about frost shock helping you out in pvp. We also are making Shamanistic Rage reduce damage taken to give you survivability. We hear you about mp5 and Int, because of this we are going to make your crits cause clear casting so you don’t run out of mana anymore. Also, how would you like some of your ap to be converted to + spell damage? We know you don’t get much from spell damage but we hope you like it.

Shamans: What? We don’t need more mana! Frost shock is nice, but what is that going to do help us get in range of things like frost mages and hunters? Shamanistic rage is great in principle but dispels are constantly put on the focus target so it’s not going to do anything!

Blizz: We can’t do more changes right now until we see how these current changes affect balance. BTW we’re giving hunters mortal strike and removing their deadzone because they convinced us that a dispel that does damage isn’t enough.

Shamans: But we were told a dispel that did damage would break the game and had one taken away from us!

Blizz: Quiet before we sneak a wf nerf into this patch.

Elemental:

Blizz: We hear you about that mana problem, in addition to water shield and mana spring we are also changing your clearcasting talent and reworking lightning bolt in x and y ways.
Shamans: But that will nerf our DPS!

Blizz: No it won’t

Shamans: Here is math that says it will

Blizz: Wait for ptr and do tests

Shamans: Here are tests that say it does

Blizz: Our tests are showing a different result

Shamans: Here are more tests that say it does

Blizz: Ok, it does at the levels of spell damage you have but increases dps for undergeared shamans. We’ll change that threshold but you should note that you’re not going to scale well anymore.

Shamans: Wew

Blizz: Oh yeah, we’re also fixing an ancient bug in elemental mastery because it was being used to get you too much burst

Shamans: Ouch, but we knew it was a bug

2.4 Bug:

Elemental shamans were incorrectly getting an extra 1% crit from a talent. This bug has existed for ages but we are going to correct it now at this time.

Change;

Healing grace, the third tier resto talent that no one uses, is now going to provide 30% dispel resist to shaman spells. You’re going to have to give up 3 talent points to use it, it won’t really benefit your shamanistic rage or earth shield if you are focused on but your arena team will make you get it because of what it will do to bloodlust.

We’re making haste lower the global cooldown. This will make haste effects like bloodlust much more powerful.

Shamans: Oh crud, they’re buffing haste and making bloodlust harder to dispel. Why do we get the feeling we’re about to be nerfed to the point where what WE do is worthless because what we let OUR GROUP do is too powerful?

TLDR Version:

There is a disconnect between the problems shamans identify as issues for their class and the issues that Blizzard targets when adjusting the classes. For instance, enhancement complains that they are too easy to crowd control and is given some + spell damage and another mana regen talent to make up for this.

On top of this, there are repeated communication breakdowns that make addressing these issues in a constructive manner impossible. A constructive discussion can only occur if both sides actually listen to what the other side is saying instead of just waiting for their turn to talk.

Finally, we are hurt by the philosophy blizzard has taken to buffing classes. If a class combo is too powerful it is the class that provides the buffs that gets hurt, not the class that benefits from the buffs. Shadow priests got nerfed because warlocks were doing too much damage and shamans get nerfed because bloodlust makes a 5v5 team do too much damage in pvp and wf makes rogues and warriors do too much damage in pvp and pve as well.